Template:Did you know nominations/Birds of the World: Recommended English Names

Birds of the World: Recommended English Names

 * ... that Birds of the World: Recommended English Names was the result of a sixteen-year effort to standardize the English names of the world's birds?


 * Comment: The photo is included for two reasons: it is visually arresting and it depicts a scene from other than the English-speaking world.
 * Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Metrotown, Burnaby
 * Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/St. Michael's Catholic Church (Mechanicsburg, Ohio)

5x expanded by Piledhigheranddeeper (talk). Self nom at 16:36, 1 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Nice book cover, but it's not suitable for Wikipedia's main page, as it's not licensed to the requirements: "the main page can have only freely licensed pictures"  Schwede 66  20:14, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Nor is it allowed to be displayed here per WP:NFCC. I've removed it. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:30, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Symbol possible vote.svg 5x expansion is verified. Article is well-supported by footnotes. I do not have access to most of the cited sources, including those cited in support of the hook fact, but the hook fact is supported by plenty of sources that I could access (although some sources say that it took 15 years; it appears to me that the standardization effort took 15 years, then it took another year to get the book published). The hook is interesting, but I think it could be reworded to make it a little more interesting. For example:
 * ALT1a ... that Birds of the World: Recommended English Names is the result of a 16-year effort to get consensus on standard English names for the world's birds?


 * My only reservation about this nomination is due to my perception of close paraphrasing in the article. Comparing the article text with this online source, I noticed some passages that seemed too similar. For example, the article's sentence "A compact disk inside the back cover provides Excel spreadsheet files containing the complete list of 10,068 species, as well as more extensive range information than could be provided in the printed text" is too close to the source's "A cd tucked inside the back cover provides Excel files containing the complete list of 10,068 species, along with more extensive range information than could be provided in the printed text." The choice of words in the article's "a nod to political correctness" also seems a bit close to the source's "a frustrating and pointless nod in the direction of some sort of political correctness". Seeing these similarities, I started wondering about other items in the article: whether the bulleted list under "Criteria" is possibly equally similar to a list in the book's introduction, and whether wording like "sequence is that of the 3rd edition" and "bowed to the electronic age" closely mirrors a source. It's been several days since the article expansion, which should make it easier to go back over the article and make sure that the wording is truly original.


 * Not a problem, but rather just a "might be nice": When I first read the article, I wanted more information regarding the controversy about hyphenation. (The article indicates that the American Ornithologists' Union disagrees with the book regarding hyphenation and says that this "proved to be a particularly divisive topic", but it doesn't tell me what the issue is.) Reading sources like and, I find that the AOU insists on hyphens in names like "Storm-petrel" and "Whistling-duck", while the book's approach to hyphenation renders these names as "Storm Petrel" and "Whistling Duck". I'd love for the article to describe these different positions on hyphens. --Orlady (talk) 23:02, 6 February 2013 (UTC)


 * The passages are all cited to sources, but some might be seen as tracking them too closely (on the other hand, there are "terms of art" that one sees used again and again in the field). I took a whack or two at these.  As to the hyphenation, etc., I don't have a printed source, but the scuttlebutt is that the AOU's people on the naming committee practically threw tantrums whenever the AOU's names weren't adopted, and then felt it necessary to criticize the work as a whole in the end.  But again, I don't have printed sources such as WP requires.  Other than that, OK.--JingleJim (talk) 13:42, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
 * See WP:Close paraphrasing for discussion of why our articles shouldn't track too closely to the source. Citing a reference does not resolve concerns about possibly copyvio. Thanks for taking those whacks to the article. The hyphenation issue is amusing, but all too typical of the way mature adults sometimes react to little things like hyphens. --Orlady (talk) 07:27, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Pictogram voting keep.svg After JingleJim's efforts and additional editing by Piledhigheranddeeper and me, I judge this one to be good to go -- AGF due to the offline sources that I can't see. --Orlady (talk) 07:27, 10 February 2013 (UTC)